Innovation

Auditors count on Lotus software

2010-07-26T17:16:48

“[Lotus Sametime] means senior auditors can interact with junior auditors over our network and meet auditing requirements, yet be geographically independent, with the cost benefits that come with that.” Ross Schamburg, Queensland Audit Office CIO

Baycorp slices and dices at speed

2010-07-26T17:30:27

"Our business is driven by data - we have huge volumes through the information we collect as part of our day to day activities - and analysing and using it to influence strategies is a key part of what we do." - Alex Cruden, Baycorp IT&T manager

Cognos software delivers concrete-maker solid data

2010-07-26T17:35:55

Firth is using IBM’s Cognos business intelligence software to keep tabs on the concrete-maker’s financial performance and fleet of concrete delivery trucks.

Queenstown council seeks clearer view

2009-12-17T15:48:49

Queenstown Lakes District Council uses IBM's Component Business Model to map relationships internally and between its various agencies to improve information flow.

A new lease for Aotea College

2010-07-26T17:51:57

“We need a reliable solution. We have a tight budget but the pedigree of the equipment is important — we do not want cheap-and-nasty.” - Rob Brown, IT manager, Aotea College

Kelston Boys powers up

2010-07-26T17:52:25

“Our IT solution is critical as most services used by teachers and students are now delivered via the network and run on the server infrastructure.” - David Leckey, IT manager, Kelston Boys’ High School

Easy access at Rangi Ruru Girls’ School

2010-07-27T10:25:59

“In the good old days the challenge for schools was getting enough server processor power but now the issue is how much reliable, high-end storage you can provide.” - Barry Baughan, IT services manager, Rangi Ruru Girls’ School

Innovation Index of New Zealand

2010-03-18T09:38:49

New research reveals that the rate of innovation in New Zealand has been stagnant for almost a decade - which has to be a worry for a nation seeking a step-change improvement in economic growth.

Converting 'Noise' into Knowledge

2009-05-28T15:35:19

The Collaborative CxO: Today, organisations spend a significant proportion of their IT budgets on storing, governing and securing their corporate data. In all these efforts, it is often forgotten to capture and leverage the business value of their corporate intellectual property. Enhancing the value of information by turning it from just 'noise' into knowledge, however, is the crux for the creation of strategic advantage.

NZ – The Land of the Long White Cloud?

2009-08-03T14:00:00

CIO's and Executives alike, agree that today's business operations are heavily dependant on technology. Supposedly "simple" business requests such as up-scaling IT production, changes in business processes to meet customer demands or to achieve productivity gains, and the integration of new/existing services, often reach the boundaries of organisations' IT abilities.

Creative serfs

2009-12-18T16:48:16

Ideas are free—and ideas people can be bloody cheap too. Gena Tuffery looks behind the corporate façade and meets the creative interns getting by on company handouts and whatever’s left in the fridge.

MayDE in China

2009-12-18T16:55:48

Although its name suggests serenity, there’s nothing calm about St Lukes Shopping Centre in Auckland. That concrete retail rotunda heaving with people lugging kids, groceries and chain-store bags jammed with stuff? Yeah, that’s the one.

Poor Fortune

2009-12-18T16:56:23

It takes a Kiwi to think of something this nutty. Take left-over meat from New Zealand abattoirs, mix it with unwanted kiwifruit pulp, dry the result, package it into a sachet, and then sell it as super-food to the world’s poor and starving. Oh, and as a sideline, flog the sachets at a premium to Californian body builders.

The rise of the smartocracy

2009-12-18T17:03:10

Of all the differences between people, one factor has a greater bearing on income than any other: intelligence. And IQ scores show that each generation is getting smarter. Jamie Cullinane examines the rise of the smartocracy

Not for kids

2009-12-18T17:01:35

Who would have thought that infrastructure was the most interesting part of the Internet? Welcome to cloud computing, where big pipes and big iron create a second—no, third—generation of Internet entrepreneurs.Matt Cooney asks: could New Zealand become the land of the long net cloud?

Goodnight nurse

2009-12-18T17:05:24

If the idea of R2D2 changing your bedpan isn’t appealing, you can be sure it’s one job that nurses won’t miss. It’s just one of the tasks that a robo-nurse is being designed to do in a collaboration between the University of Auckland and local artificial intelligence experts at Robot-Hosting.

Forecast: Cloudy

2009-12-18T17:17:48

Who would have thought that infrastructure was the most interesting part of the Internet? Welcome to cloud computing, where big pipes and big iron create a second—no, third—generation of Internet entrepreneurs. Matt Cooney asks: could New Zealand become the land of the long net cloud?

The Pokomen

2009-12-18T17:44:54

If you can draw your idea, Wellington startup Ponoko can probably make it—and find buyers for it too. Peter Griffin meets the New Zealanders at the forefront of the handmade revolution

Profiling Picasso

2009-12-18T17:53:12

Throw away your de Bono, ignore your critics and embrace your appalling personality. Sometimes it pays to be crazy—just look at Picasso. That’s the advice from Dr Margaret Boden OBE, author of The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms and lecturer at Sussex University on the process of creativity. Lauren Bartlett seeks the science behind Boden’s ideas

Little Kiwi battler

2009-12-18T17:54:55

North & South magazine once facetiously asked if Kevin Roberts was God. Others just thought he talked too much, and plenty regard his Lovemarks books as too eeerk for words. But after 850,000 book sales and 11 years in As Saatchi & Saatchi global CEO, Roberts is still winning business, singing the praises of New Zealand, and seeing love and rugby everywhere. Vincent Heeringa talks to the world’s most irrepressible optimist, starting with why he’s right and Vincent is 850,000 times wrong

Dancing with elephants

2009-12-18T17:58:30

You've got a hot new idea for a product or service that will slot neatly into an existing infrastructure. You can create it quickly and build on someone else’s audience. But are you living on borrowed time? Will your carefully developed and devised offering survive, if it piggybacks on someone else’s service and is at the mercy of business decisions that you have no influence over?

Become design-led

2009-12-18T18:00:56

Apple, Icebreaker, Fisher & Paykel, Dyson, Formway … it’s design that lifts these companies — and their profits — above the ordinary. But how do you encourage your company to become design-led? A survey of the best-designed companies finds four key qualities that they have in common

The secret of our success

2009-12-21T08:55:09

Think you're talented? Creative? Dare we say it: outstanding? Good for you - but if Malcolm Gladwell is right, that'll only get you so far. In his latest book, Outliers, Gladwell turns his focus on the very nature of success itself, making some intriguing connections between The Beatles and Bill Gates, Canadian pro hockey players and Asian rice farmers. He's looked at the traits of successful people and found what they have in common: hard work and happy circumstance. So how do the merely talented get ahead?

How to … tune up your ideas

2009-12-21T08:55:14

Even companies with great ideas usually don't know how to analyse them. Bill Wilmot makes sure ideas get scrutinised - ruthlessly. Here's how he helps kill bad ideas and give great ideas a tune-up

First do no harm

2009-12-18T17:39:46

Holding the balance of life and death in your hands isn’t a game—except when it is. New Zealand-based GoVirtualMedical has finally replaced the medieval med-student practice of practicing on a prone body with a professional multimedia version of the battery-powered board game, Operation.